NEW BRITAIN - The Goodwin Tech softball team celebrated its senior night Wednesday before the season finale against Canton. But the celebrating for the Gladiators stopped before the first pitch, as they were dominated in a 17-4 loss.

The Warriors scored in every inning except for the third inning, even sending up all nine batters in the fourth and sixth innings.

“Just overall, we came out flat,” Goodwin Tech head coach Paul Soucy said. “In many of our games this year, we have that one bad inning, in this case two.”

The Gladiators biggest struggle was their defense. The team made four errors, and let several easy fly balls drop for hits.

“We struggled to make basic plays again,” Soucy said. “Our biggest dilemma all season has been catching fly balls. Today wasn’t too bad. But defensively, we just didn’t play well.”

Sophomore Valerie Ramirez got the start in the pitching circle for Goodwin Tech. She struggled to have command of the strike zone, walking four batters over 5.1 innings pitched. Ramirez fell behind on first-pitch balls to 15 of the 34 batters she faced, which Soucy thought was a result of fatigue from just pitching Monday against Wolcott Tech.

“I just had an off day today,” Ramirez said. “I knew my team was there to back me up. Even if they made errors, I knew they were still there to pick me up, even though I was down. So I tried my best for them, but it just wasn’t my day.”

Ramirez also gave up 10 hits and struck out four in the game.

Junior Soannie Arroyo came in relief in the sixth inning and didn’t fare much better in terms of control. She walked seven batters over the final 1.2 innings, hitting two batters and giving up eight of the runs.

It also wasn’t much better for Goodwin Tech from the batter’s box. The Gladiators scored four runs, all of which came in the sixth inning. They also had more strikeouts (8) than hits (4) in the game.

Ramirez noted the fact that Canton used six different pitchers in the game had something to do with their offensive struggles.

“Seeing the different pitchers, like the different speeds and pitching styles, threw us off I think, because there were just so many,” Ramirez said. “But I don’t think they were overpowering where we couldn’t hit them. We just simply weren’t hitting today.”

The loss for the Gladiators concludes their regular season with an 11-10 record, qualifying them for the state tournament. But Goodwin Tech is limping into the playoffs, losing its last three games.

“We knew going into the last five or six games, it was going to be tough,” Soucy said. “We have to step up and get back to basics.”